Dallas Real Estate and Short Sale Blog

Yesterday was interesting to say the least. We spent the day giving one of our brokerage websites a facelift.

The original website was done in 2006 and had become dated. We had several goals for the facelift. We wanted to convert from static html pages to WordPress, wanted a clean Web 2.0 look, and wanted to retain most of the functionality of the original site as it had served us well.

This was also going to be a "dress rehearsal" for a facelift for our main website early next year.

The day started with moving the original site to a temporary domain. Once the original site was moved, the old domain was cleared, and a fresh copy of WordPress was installed. The first plugin installed was Maintenance that shows a page on the site telling visitors that the site was being worked on and giving them a link to the temporary domain. While web visitors see the maintenance page, admins see the live site. This allows you to work on it while trying to save some of your traffic.

We went with the Architect theme from iThemes. Having no experience with the theme cost us some time learning how to work with it. I had to do very little coding outside of tweaking a little of the PHP in the footer.

By the end of the day the installation was complete. The last steps were deleting the old site from the temporary domain and building 301 redirects in the .htaccess file to preserve the URLs that had already been indexed.

Total cost was about $70--$57 for the template and about $13 on images. I spent most of the day working on it but had I had a plan in-place and time blocked I could have completed it in about 4 hours.

What to see it in action? Visit us at www.referralagentsoftexas.com.

It's that time of the year again...time to update the copyright notices on your websites and blogs.

I used to do this manually but a couple of years ago I automated it using a simple script and some HTML. All my sites show a notice similar to this,"Copyright 2006 - 2011 The Branch Team..."  The simple script below will update the "second year" in te notice to keep it current.

Start Code

<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">
<!--//Script created by Ronny Drappier, http://sipreal.com
//Visit http://javascriptkit.com for this script
    today=new Date();
    y0=today.getFullYear();
  // end hiding --->
</script>

 <font color="#ffffff" size="1"> Copyright ©
2006 -

<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">
  <!--- Hide from old browsers
    document.write(y0);
  // end hiding --->
</script>

The Branch Team...

End Code

It's really not that hard to follow. The script pulls the current year in the first section of the code, the second section sets up the copyright notice, the third section of code inserts the current year into the notice, and the fourth section finishes up the notice.

If you don't want to automate, remember to go update your copyright notices.

I don’t often write blogs about software but every now and then a company stands out and deserves to be recognized. This time I came across two great companies and products in a single project.

Over the past couple of weeks we began to transition from an online fax service to a fax machine and a fax server in our office. We had had problems getting our faxes from time-to-time so we either had to find a new online service or bring it back in-house. The goals were to remain paperless, retain functionality, and have no increase in cost.

The Brother 7820N can be used as a traditional paper fax machine or a paperless fax using Brother’s PC-FAX software. We had an old laptop so we loaded it with a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro, PC-FAX, and we had a nice little paperless fax server up and running. Remain Paperless, Check!



With an online fax service you typically get your emails via email in PDF format. We were able purchase Follow Me Fax which can convert the TIF format from the Brother into a PDF and send it out via email. We soon discovered that the TIFs produced by the Brother fax machine have a flaw that prevents the PDF engine in Follow Me Fax from producing a PDF file.

EDocFile, the software developer, was responsive and we were able to troubleshoot the issue. While they could not solve the ability to make PDF issues (it’s a Brother issue), they did update Follow Me Fax to deal with the odd files names produced by the Brother fax machine. The good news is we are able to forward the emails as multi-page TIF files.

The only downside to TIF files was that we would not be able to view faxes on our iPhones. We’re mobile quite a bit and the ability to view faxes on the road was a capability we wanted to retain.



In my quest for a solution, I came across Fax Reader by SmallTalk Consulting. Fax Reader is an application for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod that was designed to read multi-page TIF files. I quickly purchased a copy on iTunes and installed it on my iPhone.

I had problems getting it to work and dropped the developer an email at 2 in the morning. I was really surprised to get a response within a few minutes. We exchanged emails and determined that I had failed to allow Location Services to be active in the software. I made one quick change to the Location Services settings and we were up and running. Retain Functionality, Check!

We will be terminating the online fax service saving about $15 a month. We’re porting the number to our fax machine in the office at a cost of $2 per month. Follow Me Fax was $99 and Fax Reader was $3.99. We were able to reduce our costs by $13 a month with an upfront investment of $103. The project pays for itself in 8 months. No Increase in Cost, Check.

The developer of Fax Reader has given me five Promo Codes for a free thirty-day trial. Email me if you would like one of them.

Source: http://www.thebranchteam.com/wordpress/2010/12/31/fax-reader-by-smalltalk-consulting-ltd-and-follow-me-fax-by-edocfile-inc/

We recently converted our blogging platform to WordPress. We did a custom template self-hosted version in order to have it match our primary website in basic design and look.  At some point, we will move the entire website onto the WordPress platform but that's down the line and the subject of another blog.

We left the original blog online for a while as we moved some of the older posts onto WordPress. When we were done, we deleted the old blog files. All appeared well.

A few days later we were checking our domain in Google's Webmaster Tools and noted we were getting lots of 404 errors on the old blog posts.  A 404 error tells the world that the "requested page was not found" on the server. Apparently we had developed back-links to the old blog site and Google had indexed many of our blog entries.  We were a bit concerned about all the 404s impacting our ranking on Google and were desperately looking for an answer.

Disclaimer: the rest of this is technical in nature.

We're running an Apache Server and the answer was both easy and elegant.  In the root directory of an Apache Server is a file named, ".htaccess" and this file can be a powerful tool. Our old blog was in the /blog subdirectory and the new blog was in the /wordpress subdirectory.  We wanted any URL calling a file in the /blog subdirectory to be sent to /wordpress/index.php. 

For example:

http://www.thebranchteam.com/blog/archives/2008/09/entry_114.html

Should be redirected to:

http://www.thebranchteam.com/wordpress/

We downloaded the existing .htaccess file to my PC, opened it in notepad, and added the following:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^blog/.*$ /wordpress/ [R=301]

Basically, the code tells the server to take any requests for files in /blog/, redirect them to /wordpress/, and report it as a 301 (moved permanently) rather than a 404 (file not found)

We saved the file and uploaded it back to our server. Problem solved!

Originally posted at http://www.thebranchteam.com/wordpress/2010/11/28/we-modified-our-website-now-we-are-getting-404s/

Tom and Gina Branch (The Branch Team) have selected MobiCentric to provide a new mobile IDX solution. The Branch Team embraced mobile technology in 2009 releasing DFW Home Search for the iPhone and going live with a mobile edition of their website.  While pleased with the initial effort, they wanted a more robust and browser aware solution.

With over 20 years of real estate and technology experience, MobiCentric is committed to enabling real estate professionals leverage the mobile web to grow their business. Their primary goal is to provide Mobile Websites and Mobile Marketing Tools to real estate agents and brokers. Their mobile website system, MobiCentric Pro, integrates with MLS Boards across the nation to give real estate professionals a relevant market tool in reaching home buyers.

Visit www.thebranchteam.mobi to see it in action.

Source:  The Branch Team and MobiCentric

According to Wikipedia, "In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to more accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight."

Those of you who follow my blog know I've wanted to try High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography for some time. 

The opportunity presented itself today when I was photographing a new listing.  The home sits on a wooded creek lot and the views from the windows of the master bedroom are a great selling point. 

This photo is properly composed to capture the interior of the bedroom.  Note how the windows are blown out with the bright light coming into the room.

I then shot a series of photographs of the same room varying the aperture. Here are those photos:

I then used Photomatix to create the HDR photograph and did the tone mapping.  The HDR photo was then dropped into Photoshop for final adjustments.

While I'm not 100 percent satisfied with the result, It is a move in the right direction.

I've received a number of emails asking about my real estate photography.  I'll start by stating that I am a fair photographer.  Most of what I've learned over the past few years is the result of spending time with and learning from professional photographers and graphic artists.  Many thanks go to Glenn Johnson for his personal guidance and mentoring.

Let's start with my equipment.  My primary camera body is a Nikon D40. This is an entry-level Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) body.  It works fine but if I had it to do again, I would purchase a Nikon D80. The primary difference for me is that the D80 will do auto-bracketing for HDR. With the D40, you have to do it manually. 

The lens is the most important piece in my opinion.  The D40 kit comes with a Nikkor AF-S 18-55mm zoom.  The 18mm setting will produce acceptable photographs.  My personal choice is the Sigma 10-20mm Super Wide Angle Zoom.  The 10mm setting produces great interior photos. 

Next you need lighting.  The on-board flash is useless for any serious work in my opinion. You need a high-power flash unit.  My primary flash is a Nikon SB-600. It has enough power to fill most rooms without any additional strobes or lighting.  I do own a lighting set with 2 lights and umbrellas but it is not used often. 

When using the wide angle lens you will need a diffuser for the flash.  I use a $20 STO-FEN diffuser. It works like a charm spreading out the light and preventing hot-spots.

Post-shoot processing is done in Adobe Photoshop CS4 Professional.  In my opinion, Photoshop sets the standard.  It's expensive at over $800, but it is simply the best. 

The photo below was a new construction townhouse we listed.  They construction crew dropped a Port-A-Potty in front of the house about 30 minutes before I got there.  I simply took the shot and removed the "potty" later.  This is not a quick task so try to get the best possible shots while you're on-site.  I often take over 100 shots on each listing.  I'd rather not have to go back out later. Note I've provided both raw and post-processing images.

Since I don't shoot HDR, I try to shoot on overcast days, just before sunrise, or just after sunset.  This allows me to avoid harsh shadows outside and blown-out windows inside.  The problem with that is the skies are not blue.  Not a problem.  I have several stock sky shots that I simply drop into the photo.

Want to capture a tall ceiling?  Lay on the floor with the camera at floor-level.  Tip the camera up to capture the ceiling.  The wide angle will produce a trapezoid effect that will have to be corrected in post-shoot processing.  The shot below was done with this technique. 

I've invested about $2000 in equipment and about $825 in software.  Each listing takes about 2 hours on-site and another hour or so in post-shoot processing.  Personally, I enjoy photographing my listings but it's not for everyone.